This repository contains Packer templates for creating Ubuntu Vagrant boxes.
Pre-built boxes can be found here: vagrantup
To build all the boxes, you will need VirtualBox and VMware Fusion / VMware Workstation and Parallels Desktop installed.
We make use of JSON files containing packer templates to build specific versions of Ubuntu. For example, to build Ubuntu 22.04, use the following:
packer build ubuntu2204-desktop.json
If you want to make boxes for a specific desktop virtualization platform, use the -only
parameter. For example, to build Ubuntu 22.04 for VirtualBox:
packer build -only=virtualbox-iso ubuntu2204-desktop.json
The templates currently support the following desktop virtualization strings:
virtualbox-iso
- VirtualBox desktop virtualizationvmware-iso
- VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation desktop virtualizationparallels-iso
- Parallels Desktop Pro desktop virtualization
We've also provided a wrapper script bin/box
for ease of use, so alternatively, you can use
the following to build Ubuntu 22.04 for all providers:
bin/box build ubuntu2204-desktop
Or if you just want to build Ubuntu 22.04 for VirtualBox:
bin/box build ubuntu2204-desktop virtualbox
A GNU Make Makefile
drives a complete basebox creation pipeline with the following stages:
build
- Create basebox*.box
filestest
- Verify that the basebox*.box
files produced function correctlydeliver
- Upload*.box
files to Vagrant Cloud
The pipeline is driven via the following targets, making it easy for you to include them in your favorite CI tool:
make build # Build all available box types
make test # Run tests against all the boxes
make deliver # Upload box artifacts to a repository
make test-cloud # Test deployed boxes (after downloading them)
make clean # Clean up build detritus
The templates respect the following network proxy environment variables and forward them on to the virtual machine environment during the box creation process, should you be using a proxy:
- http_proxy
- https_proxy
- ftp_proxy
- rsync_proxy
- no_proxy
Automated tests are written in Serverspec and require
the vagrant-serverspec
plugin to be installed with:
vagrant plugin install vagrant-serverspec
The bin/box
script has sub-commands for running both the automated tests
and for performing exploratory testing.
Use the bin/box test
sub-command to run the automated Serverspec tests.
For example to execute the tests for the Ubuntu 22.04 box on VirtualBox, use
the following:
bin/box test ubuntu2204-desktop virtualbox
There are several variables that can be used to override some of the default settings in the box build process. The variables can that can be currently used are:
- cpus
- disk_size
- memory
- update
The variable HEADLESS
can be set to run Packer in headless mode.
Set HEADLESS := true
, the default is false.
The variable UPDATE
can be used to perform OS patch management. The
default is to not apply OS updates by default. When UPDATE := true
,
the latest OS updates will be applied.
The variable PACKER
can be used to set the path to the packer binary.
The default is packer
.
The variable ISO_PATH
can be used to set the path to a directory with
OS install images. This override is commonly used to speed up Packer builds
by pointing at pre-downloaded ISOs instead of using the default download
Internet URLs.
The variables SSH_USERNAME
and SSH_PASSWORD
can be used to change the
default name & password from the default vagrant
/vagrant
respectively.
The variable INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY
can be set to turn off installation of the
default insecure vagrant key when the image is being used outside of vagrant.
Set INSTALL_VAGRANT_KEY := false
, the default is true.
The variable CUSTOM_SCRIPT
can be used to specify a custom script
to be executed. You can add it to the script/custom
directory (content
is ignored by Git).
The default is custom-script.sh
which does nothing.
- Fork and clone the repository.
- Create a new branch, please don't work in your
master
branch directly. - Add new Serverspec tests in the
test/
subtree for the change you want to make. - Run
make test
to test all templates orbin/box test
on individual boxes to see if the tests pass. - Fix stuff if necessary. Repeat steps 3-5 until done.
- Update
README.md
andAUTHORS
to reflect any changes. - If you have a large change in mind, it is still preferred that you split them into small commits. Good commit messages are important. The git project has some nice guidelines on writing descriptive commit messages.
- Push to your fork and submit a pull request.